Leading off today: A Washington, D.C., high school distance runner was
disqualified from a weekend meet because the custom-made outfit she wears to conform to her Muslim faith violated competition rules.
A quick check of the Internet shows that hundreds of newspapers and TV stations have carried the story on the Web sites in the last 48 hours.
Juashaunna Kelly, a senior at Theodore Roosevelt High, has the fastest mile and two-mile times of any female in the city this winter. She was disqualified from Saturday's Montgomery Invitational while wearing the same uniform she has worn for three seasons. The one-piece blue and orange unitard covers her head, arms, torso and legs. Over the unitard, she wears the same orange and blue T-shirt and shorts as her teammates.
The outfit allows her to conform to her Muslim faith, which forbids displaying any skin other than her face and hands, but meet director Tom Rogers told The Associated Press that Kelly's uniform violated rules of the National Federation of State High School Associations. Uniforms are required to be "a single-solid color and unadorned, except for a single school name or insignia no more than 2 1/4 inches," he said.
Rogers said he offered several compromise options, including placing a plain T-shirt over her unitard and then wearing her team uniform over it. But the runner's mother and Roosevelt Coach Tony Bowden disputed that account.
"First, they said she had to take her hood off," said her mother, Sarah Kelly. "Then, they said she can't have anything with logos displayed. Then, they said she had to turn it inside out. When I told them that there weren't any logos on it, they said she had to put a plain white T-shirt on over it."
Kelly's top 1,600-meter time is 5:17.49 and her 3,200 time is 12:00.81.
Leading off today: Horseheads football Coach Rick Gryska won't return for a fifth season, The Star-Gazette reported.
